Pannekoek, Anton and the Quest For an Emancipatory Socialism

A short biographical article on the famous council communist theorist and astronomer.

Anton Pannekoek and the Quest For an Emancipatory Socialism

(John Gerber, 1988)

The past decade and a half has witnessed a resurgence of interest in a generation of non-orthodox Marxist thinkers who came to political maturity in the years immediately preceding and following the Bolshevik Revolution, and whose theories grew out of the collapse of the Second International, the degeneration of Marxism into a mechanistic doctrine of economic determinism, and the failure of the revolutionary wave which swept Europe in 1917-1920. While considerable attention has been given to thinkers such as Gramsci, Lukacs, Korsch, and Luxemburg, the Dutch Marxist Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960) has received only minimal attention. Moreover, much of the attention devoted to Pannekoek has often been marred by its partisan character. (1) Yet despite this comparative neglect, Pannekoek's theoretical work represents one of the most consistent and sustained attempts to develop Marxism as the theory and practice of the revolutionary self-emancipation of the working class. He remains an interesting and original thinker who managed to raise, if not resolve, an impressive array of questions both about Marxism as a method of social emancipation, and about the larger issues of domination and subordination in advanced industrial society. The recurring tendency of Marxism to transform itself into statist and authoritarian systems of varying types makes a critical appraisal of Pannekoek's nearly six-decade-long attempt to develop an authentically emancipatory socialism seem particularly compelling.

Much more than a purely Dutch figure, Pannekoek was a revolutionary intellectual with a transnational vocation. An astronomer of international renown, Pannekoek was active in the left wing of Dutch and German social democracy in the years before 1914. Along with Rosa Luxemburg, he emerged as one of the main leaders of the German anti-revisionist left and developed a powerful critique of social democratic orthodoxy. Following the outbreak of the First World War, he was among the first to call for the formation of a new International and later became a prominent figure in the Zimmerwaid anti-war movement. Although he had played a pivotal role in the formation of European communism, and was a leader of the Comintern's Western European Bureau, Pannekoek was among the first to break with authoritarian communism. As the pre-eminent theorist of the "left" communist Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD), Pannekoek articulated an alternative West European conception of communism and a forceful critique of Leninism which earned him Lenin's lasting hostility in "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder. From the early 1920s to his death in 1960, he remained active as the leading theoretician of the quasi-syndicalist council communist movement.

As a theorist, Pannekoek's specific contribution lay in his penetrating critique of the Marxism of both the Second and Third Internationals, and in his attempt to develop new anti-bureaucratic models of revolutionary transformation. His extensive theoretical reflections also strikingly anticipated many of the most fundamental theoretical contributions of the so-called Western Marxist tradition. Like Lukacs, he articulated the centrality of ideas and consciousness to historical development. Like Gramsci, he sought to develop Marxism as a philosophy of praxis and stressed the importance of combating bourgeois ideological domination by developing an independent proletarian ideological hegemony. Like Korsch, he attempted to strip Marxism of its concern with metaphysics and highlight its importance as a critical method.

What initially differentiated Pannekoek's theorizing from the mainstream of Marxist orthodoxy was his concern with the question of Geist, or more precisely, the role of subjective factors-class consciousness, ideas, will, morality, and solidarity-in social development. Intellectually, Pannekoek's point of departure was grounded in the philosophical concepts of the German autodidact philosopher, Joseph Dietzgen, who sought to extend the role of dialectics to conceptual and abstract thought. Pannekoek considered Dietzgen an indispensable supplement to Marx and Engels, whose ideas were of almost equal importance.(2) From Dietzgen, Pannekoek derived the view as early as 1901, that the material world and the world of consciousness constituted an inseparable entity in which each reciprocally conditions the other. Without deprecating the importance of the material elements, he stressed that the revolutionary struggle was, in its most essential aspects, an ideological process shaped by the diffuse flow of ideas and life experiences. Proletarian revolution, from Pannekoek's standpoint, represented a victory of the mind, of historical understanding, and revolutionary will. The consciousness of the proletariat was as much a factor affecting historical evolution as the material factors from which it arises. Pannekoek insisted that the process leading to an emancipatory socialism could only begin with the workers striving to overturn the barriers to autonomous proletarian thinking in their daily lives.

In a theory which prefigured, in less developed form, many of the main themes of the theory of ideological hegemony made famous by Antonio Gramsci, Pannekoek argued that the subjugation of the working class was not entirely due to economics and force alone, but in no small measure to the "spiritual superiority of the ruling minority" which "presides over all spiritual developments, all science. " Through its control over institutions such as the schools, the churches, and the press, the bourgeoisie "contaminates ever-larger proletarian masses with bourgeois conceptions." It was this "spiritual dependence" on the bourgeoisie, Pannekoek argued, that represented the "main cause of the weakness of the proletariat."(3)

Like Gramsci, Pannekoek also stressed that the proletarian revolution would have to sweep away every element of the old society-the cultural as well as the political and economic. If the proletariat is to assert its ideological hegemony, it must create an autonomous proletarian culture as an essential part of the revolutionary process: "These crude, tattered, and uneducated proletarians, they are in reality the bearers of a higher culture . . . Socialist culture is distinguished from bourgeois culture, not only by the fact that it is much broader, but also by the fact that its inner content is completely different. This culture is one which will place men in a completely diff erent relationship to nature, the external conditions of life, and other men."(4)

Prior to 1910, Pannekoek's political views were still comparatively consistent with the orthodox Marxism of the Second International, as defined by thinkers such as Kautsky, Babel, and Plekhanov. He remained generally committed to the basic orthodox Marxist premise that proletarian organization -in both its party and trade union forms-was a necessary counterweight to capitalist organization and the social corollary of economic development. But what Pannekoek stressed was the subjective and transformative qualities of proletarian organization and the direct link between the maturation of these factors in various forms of proletarian action.

What most sharply distinguished proletarian organization from bourgeois organization, he insisted, was not its numerical strength, but its capacity to generate qualities such as solidarity, morality, esprit, and discipline. In contrast to the individualism of bourgeois organizations, proletarian organization was marked by social bonds, commitments, and relationships which ultimately merged into a cultural or spiritual dimension: "Organization binds them together, unites their diverse wills into a single will, behind which rests the collective power of the masses." (5) Through their participation in proletarian organizations, the workers are transformed into new men with new habits and new modes of thought. The struggles that the parties and trade unions wage would help awaken class consciousness, instill a sense of combat, break down old illusions, and generate discipline and feelings of solidarity. The "gigantic moral elevation" that occurs in these struggles, Pannekoek insisted, was "a necessary precondition for transforming the weak worker into a conqueror of capitalism. " (6) From this standpoint, class organization, consciousness, and class action were inextricably linked. Pannekoek saw in the logic of proletarian organization and action a process of consciousness transformation that would ultimately propel the masses toward socialism, increase their potential for critical thought, and gradually expand their capacity to rule and manage society on their own.

Pannekoek's whole theoretical and political outlook underwent a dramatic reformulation in the wake of the Prussian suffrage demonstrations of 1910. Whereas he had previously viewed extra-parliamentary mass action and parliamentarianism as different aspects of the same process of revolutionary development, and defended them as equal in importance, he now began to denigrate the value of parliamentary activity altogether, posing it as a historically superseded form of struggle.

In shifting the main terrain of struggle from parliament to extra-parliamentary action, Pannekoek made use of the term "mass action" in such a way that he transformed what had been largely a vague expression into an all-embracing slogan and an increasingly integrated revolutionary strategy. Defining mass action as "an extra-parliamentary act of the organized working class, by which it operates directly and not through the medium of delegates," (7) Pannekoek conceived of this new form of struggle less as a tactic, or even a series of tactics, but more a total orientation toward revolutionary activity. What Pannekoek envisioned was a prolonged epoch of confrontation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, characterized by a succession of graduated mass movements and struggles, involving actions ranging from street demonstrations to the general strike. These actions would serve to educate, collectivize, and strengthen the proletariat for the coming struggle for power , while simultaneously weakening the foundation of the capitalist state: "Each assault by the proletariat upon the individual effects of capitalism means a weakening of the power of capital, a strengthening of our own power and a step further in the process of revolution." (8) While considering the objective aims of mass actions important, Pannekoek felt that what was more crucial was the impact these actions had on the consciousness of the working class. The end of the process of mass action, he felt, would be "nothing less than the complete transformation of the proletarian mentality." (9) Pannekoek treated it as axiomatic that continuous mass action would also destroy the moral and i deological authority of the bourgeoisie-its main source of strength-so that all that remained were the material instruments of force.

But what was most important, indeed, theoretically decisive in Pannekoek's formula, was his concept of the "organizational spirit" (Organisationsgeist). According to this conception, the real nature of proletarian organization comes not from the outward indicators of strength such as membership size, financial resources, formal structures and so forth, but from the inner lives of the workers themselves, which generate feelings of solidarity, collectivity, self-sacrifice, and class identity. This spirit, he felt, was the real activating element of the workers' movement:

The organizational spirit is the living soul of the labor movement which derives its power and capability for action from its body. But, unlike the soul of Christian theology, this immortal soul does not float around lifeless in the sky, but remains, in fact, always grounded in the organizational body, living in the common organized actions of those it joins together. This spirit is not something abstract or imaginary, put forward in contrast to the "real, concrete organization" of the existing organizational forms, but it is, in fact, something just as real and concrete as these forms. It binds individuals just as firmly together as any principles or statutes could ever do, so that even if their external bond of principles and statutes were severed, these individuals would no longer be loose atoms competing against each other. (IO)

The conclusion Pannekoek drew from this was that socialism could never be achieved by the gradual attainment of a parliamentary majority, but only by the steady erosion of the bourgeois state and the simultaneous creation of a proletarian counter-state through the process of mass action:

As the organization of state power degenerates and its strength ebbs away, so the new form of social organization, the self-created democratic organization of proletarian struggle, develops into a greater and greater power in society, taking over the functions intrinsic to the general regulation of production. (11)

With this suggestion that new working class institutional forms would supplant the existing institutional forms in the course of the revolutionary struggle and provide the framework for the future socialist state, Pannekoek broke new ground in Marxist theory. For the first time, a Marxist theorist was prepared to assert that the essence of socialism lay not in the future state, but in the process of socialist transformation itself. These fundamental themes were built upon a substratum of ideas about the role and limitations of traditional working class organizations and the relationship between leaders and masses. It was a corollary of Pannekoek's analysis that the party and trade union forms of organization were incapable of accomplishing the task of social transformation since they still reflected, to a considerable extent, the stability of capitalist society. In an argument which closely paralleled that of the German sociologist Robert Michels, Pannekoek maintained that the ideological stagnation and attenuation of class conflict in the pre-war socialist and trade union movements was a direct consequence of their bureaucratic internal structures. He contended that these gigantic and powerful organizations had almost become a state within a state, with their own officials, finances, press, spiritual values and ideology. The thousands of officials, secretaries, agitators, parliamentarians, theoreticians, and publicists formed a distinct caste, with their own narrow interests. But where Michels had focused upon organizational degeneration, Pannekoek chose to emphasize the ideological cooptation that went hand in hand with this process. He charged that Marxism, in this bureaucratic context, had been stripped of its revolutionary content and deformed into the dry doctrine of mechanical fatalism. Its practical function was nothing more than that of a legitimizing ideology for a bureaucratic party elite. As a consequence, social democracy came to embody not the negation of bourgeois society, but rather its expansion and rationalization. (12)

Pannekoek's theoretical work during the First World War was largely an extension and reformulation of the concepts he had developed in 1910. Aside from some shifts in emphasis and a few new specifics, what was new in these formulations was largely their tone and sense of immediacy. He felt that the war had unleashed a process of crisis and polarization which would ultimately give birth to a completely new type of revolutionary workers' movement. (13) And, indeed, for Pannekoek, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the German Revolution of 1918 seemed to fully confirm this prognosis. To all appearances, the two revolutions were almost exactly as he had predicted: mass actions and mass strikes, largely spontaneous in character, which found expression in new institutions of proletarian democracy-the workers' councils.

During the years 1914-1919, Pannekoek was a close collaborator with Lenin in his attempt to construct a new revolutionary International. Pannekoek, at this point, expressed few doubts or reservations about either Lenin or the Bolshevik Revolution. He viewed the Bolshevik Revolution largely as a popular revolutionary transformation based on the new organs of council democracy. (14) His commentary on the Russian Revolution included almost no references to the role of the vanguard party. Like many others of the European left, Pannekoek associated Lenin almost exclusively with world revolution, revolutionary activism, uncompromising class struggle, and militant anti-parliamentarianism.

Starting in late 1919, however, Pannekoek began to openly challenge the rapidly consolidating Leninist communist movement. Pannekoek's criticism of Leninism was twofold. On one level, he accused the Leninist communist movement of attempting to restore the "old leadership politics" of the Second International by resuming the use of traditional parliamentary and trade union tactics. He argued instead, that the main tactical problem in Western Europe was to erad icate the ideological hegemony of the bourgeoisie and replace it with an independent proletarian hegemony. This task, he felt, could not be accomplished by the use of historically outdated parliamentary and trade union tactics, but through a long, arduous revolutionary struggle, waged by a militant and class-conscious working class organized from below on the basis of new democratic structures of proletarian rule. On a second level, Pannekoek rejected the elitist vanguardist model of party organization being propagated by Lenin and the Comintern as incompatible with a genuine proletarian democracy and inadequate for the task of radicalizing the consciousness of the masses. The logic of this position led Pannekoek to raise the possibility that Leninist communism might at some future point become a major obstacle to the development of a genuine emancipatory socialism. (15) Pannekoek soon extended these formulations to a critique of the Russian Revolution itself. By 1921, he had reached the drastic conclusion that the Soviet regime had been transformed into a repressive and counter-revolutionary bureaucracy that had reduced the proletariat to a new condition of servitude.(16)

Following his expulsion from the international communist movement in 1921, Pannekoek began to turn his attention to developing a new theory of council communism, which marks his major theoretical achievement. Working in collaboration with the small Dutch Groepen van Internationalen Communisten (GIC) and the American Groups of Council Communists (GCC), Pannekoek sought to provide the framework for the emergence of a new type of revolutionary workers' movement based exclusively on workers' councils. Pannekoek's starting point was his belief that a new revolutionary workers' movement based on the principle of workers' self-management could arise only after the working class discarded the entire heritage of traditional socialism and adopted a completely "new orientation." His point of departure for this "new orientation" was a penetrating critique of the "statist" and "leader-oriented" politics of both social democracy and Leninism:

"Socialism as inherited from the nineteenth century was the creed of social mission for leaders: to transform capitalism into a system of state directed economy without exploitation, producing abundance for all. It was a creed of class struggle for workers, the belief that by transforming government into the hands of these socialists they could assure their freedom . . . Now it is seen that socialism in the sense of state-directed planned economy means state capitalism and that socialism is possible only in a new orientation. The new orientation of production is self-direction of production, self-direction of the class struggle by means of workers' councils. (17)

In theorizing the revolutionary role of the workers' councils, Pannekoek stressed that while the councils represented a higher stage of proletarian organization, they were not simply replacements for the old organizations, but the very negation of the principles underlying these organizations. Pannekoek remained firmly convinced that the councils would resolve the conflict between leaders and followers by eliminating the professional leadership bodies which had gained power over the rank-and-file. He insisted that, in the councils, the entire function of leadership would be abolished and the whole class actively incorporated into the leadership process. Although Pannekoek viewed the councils as the central agent of socialist transformation, he steadfastly maintained that they could not be mechanically proclaimed or arbitrarily willed into existence by revolutionary groups. At the most, such groups could only propagate the idea and necessity of council organization.(18) Rather than being tactical objectives in themselves, the councils represented merely the transitory organizational form of the class struggle and the embodiment of the principle of workers' control over production:

Workers' councils does not designate a fixed form of organization whose lines have been established once and for all, and for which all that remains is to perfect the details. It is concerned with a principle-that of workers' self-management of enterprises and of production. This principle can never be realized through a theoretical discussion of the best actual form it might take . . . In our era "workers' councils" is synonymous with the class struggle itself . . . Thus the idea of "workers' councils" has nothing in common with a program of practical objectives to be realized tomorrow or next year. It serves solely as a connecting thread for the long hard fight for freedom that still lies ahead for the working class. (19)

From the standpoint of revolutionary transformation, what is primary and in the councils, therefore, is not their organizational structure, but the spirit of rebellion that creates them. In this fighting capacity of the working class, Pannekoek argued, resides the means of individual and collective transformation by which the dependent, alienated wage laborer of capitalism becomes the active, independent, self-conscious producer of the future council state.

In his analysis of how the councils would develop, Pannekoek argued that the councils could only emerge spontaneously and organically out of actual working class practice and were already present in embryonic form in actions such as wildcat strikes and factory occupations. He argued that the key factor in the transformation of wildcat strikes and factory occupations into workers' councils would be the strike committees that the workers organize to coordinate these actions. These committees, he felt, embodied the two most essential elements of council organization: direct democracy and a class community. Once the wildcat strikes and factory occupations develop into national and class-wide movements, they will immediately come into conflict with the capitalist state, which will require a higher level of organization. It is at this point, felt Pannekoek, that the workers' councils would begin to make their appearance, expanding their role simultaneously with the revolution until the capitalist state is destroyed. (20)

Pannekoek envisioned the wildcat strike and factory occupation tactics, at least in part, as a form of rebellion against the traditional trade unions. He argued that in advanced capitalism the trade unions had lost all traces of their former proletarian identity and had become an integrative mechanism of capitalism. He saw the unions as "the apparatus by which monopolistic capital imposes its conditions upon the entire working class." (21) Because of their commitment to the principles of capitalist rationality, the trade unions could never raise the issue of workers' control, since it would threaten the very source of their power. Pannekoek argued that since the trade unions, and for that matter the political parties, were based on the principle of dominance by leaders, they were a faithful reproduction of the capitalist state and would be a steadfast ally of the bourgeoisie in any revolution. A rebirth of the workers' movement, he insisted, was possible only on the basis of a rebellion of the masses against the old organizations. (22)

In Pannekoek's model of revolutionary transformation, the workers' councils served a dual purpose. They represented, in the first instance, the direct organs of struggle and hence the material and spiritual base of revolution in a specific phase of capitalism; and, in the second instance, they constituted the infrastructure and the organizational arrangement of the new society.

In his book, "Workers' Councils", the most comprehensive statement of his council communist position, Pannekoek attempted to detail exactly how the council system would function in practice. What Pannekoek envisioned was a network of autonomous factory-level councils, each of which would be the locus of discussions and decisions for matters of local production. In plants too large to assemble all the workers, delegates would be selected from the various work groups who would be subject to instant recall. The councils were not to be composed of experts, nor were they to be responsible for the administration of the factory. Their main function would be to carry out the de cisions of the workers, facilitate discussions, and to serve as a liaison between the various work groups and factories. As hypothesized by Pannekoek, the local factory councils would be merged into a variegated network of collaborating regional, national, and industry-wide councils, so that production constitutes a single interconnected entity. To coordinate the work of the local councils, central councils would be formed on the same structure as the larger local councils (i.e.on the principle of shop floor delegates subject to immediate recall). Although the central councils were to be responsible for coordination, collection of data, and dissemination of information they would not be planning bodies. That task was to be left to the workers in the local councils, who, once in possession of the necessary information, would be in a position to make the critical decisions and convey them to the delegates of the central council. Beyond this, the central councils were to be responsible for maintaining horizontal cooperation between factories in the same branch of industry and vertical cooperation between the factories that provide them with materials or use their prod ucts. To supplement this network of factory councils, Pannekoek envisioned a parallel network of councils for consumer and professional groups. (23)

Pannekoek took it for granted that this new structure of democratic self-management, combined with the changes in the productive sphere- increased productivity and rapid technological development-that would accompany it, would completely revolutionize the nature of work. He assumed that the continuing development of the council society would undermine the traditional division between intellectual and manual labor, transforming work from a means of survival into a means of self-expression. In Pannekoek's hypothetical schema, the role of labor had almost quasi-religious significance: "For the free worker of the future the handling of the perfectly constructed machine, providing a tension of acuteness, will be a source of mental exaltation, of spiritual rejoicing, of intellectual beauty."(24) Pannekoek's paradigm of the future society was also postulated on the assumption that this new structure of workers' self- management provided, for the first time, the possibility for transforming production into a mentally dominated process." As envisioned by Pannekoek, in one of his more utopian moments, this transformation was to be accomplished by an elaborate new system of statistics and bookkeeping which would make all aspects of the economic process fully accessible to the producers. Through a network of interconnected computing offices, each branch of production would have responsibility for collecting and disseminating statistical data and rendering it into easily comprehensible form, by means of tables, graphs, and pictures, as a precondition for discussion by the workers in the councils. (25)

From this perspective, Pannekoek maintained that the councils would manifest themselves not only as a form of proletarian self-organization, but also as a principle for the liberation of the mind from all forms of subordination and domination. The advent of a network of councils, he argued, would signal a highly advanced state of proletarian consciousness and the prelude to a "total revolution in the spiritual life of man.(26) In Pannekoek's ideal of council democracy, the councils would assume critical pedagogical functions which would transform the mind from a concern with self to a concern with the community and society at large. The "world of workers' councils," he insisted, would be structured around a new organization of knowledge based on the acquisition of new intellectual tools by producers.(27)

Although he was a seminal figure in the development of Western Marxism and pioneered many important new insights, Pannekoek's work as a Marxist theorist was not without serious flaws, which greatly undermined the effectiveness of his ideas. For all his concern with renovating Marxism, Pannekoek's thought failed to transcend the essentially static categories of nineteenth century Marxism: its confining philosophical materialism, reductionist methodology, rationalist psychology, theoretical dogmatism, and a cataclysmic "barricades" conception of socialism. In spite of his nominal voluntarism, Pannekoek-like most Marxists of his generation-remained firmly anchored to an almost Comtean faith in science and a rigid li near conception of historical progress. His unwillingness to question the orthodox Marxist assumption that production constitutes the basis of all social life led him to a form of ardent productionism that uncritically accepted the basic structure and content of capitalist industrialization: unlimited industrial production and growth, rationalization of production, cost efficiency and glorification of the work ethic. To the end of his life, Pannekoek refused to abandon his faith in a romanticized monolithic proletariat as the sole agent of socialism. These shortcomings were compounded by a number of serious methodological flaws. His writings were often written at a high level of generality and driven toward predetermined revolutionary goals. Throughout his career, Pannekoek was often unwilling to wrestle with fundamental questions or probe into the foundations of his central assumptions and concepts. Abstracting from the bewildering particulars of experience, he often projected large generalizations and then attempted to qualify them by an unduly literal use of analogy and social metaphor. Even during his best moments as a theorist, broad schematic patterns on the decline of capitalism and the rise of socialism clouded the more immediate strategic realities he sought to elucidate.

It remains true that for all the intensity and originality of his effort, Pannekoek never succeeded in theorizing his ideas into an effective political practice or in developing a permanent alternative to Leninism and social democracy-although elements of his doctrines have appeared periodically in various social movements. Pannekoek's legacy, therefore, is largely a personal and moral one-but it is an important legacy of a life dedicated to the vision of a radically free and democratic society, a life lived in the grips of a powerful humanitarian commitment.

4. Pannekoek, "Sozialismus als Kulturmacht," "Zeitungskorrespondenz," December 24, 1911. From 1908 to 1914 while a full-time militant in the German SPD, Pannekoek wrote a regular series of weekly newspaper columns which were sent to subscribing local SPD publications. The dates cited are those of the proof copies contained in the Pannekoek Archives at the Intemational Institute for Social History (Amsterdam).

17. Pannekoek, Workers' Councils (Melboume: Southem Advocate for Workers' Councils, 1951), pp. 230-231. Parts one and two of this work have been reprinted in: The Rise of the Workers' Movement (Cambridge: Root and Branch, 1975).

27. It was on these grounds that, shortly after the Hungarian revolution of 1956, Pannekoek criticized the workers' councils that emerged for their failure to articulate a new level of consciousness and for their emphasis on "pure practice," Pannekoek, "Beschavingen," Pannekoek Archives, op. cit., folder 288.

A text drafted during the November 2010 university occupations focussing on liberal ideology, state repression and the student movement.

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